“[He] didn’t like to think of himself as vain, but there were definitely times when he wished there was someone on hand to take his photograph.”

“He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph.”

“He hoped to be successful, to make his parents proud and to sleep with more than one woman at the same time, but how to make these all compatible? He wanted to feature in magazine articles, and hoped one day for a retrospective of his work, without having any clear notion of what that work might be. He wanted to live life to the extreme, but without any mess or complications. He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.”

“So do you think it's true what they say? About girls liking bastards?''He's not a bastard. He's an idiot.''Do girls like idiots then?”

“These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through.”

“Josh likes to say he put the funk in 'functional'. Personally I think he just put the ass in 'embarrassing', but, hey, what do I know?”

“Recently he has noticed idiocy creeping up on him. His resolve to keep his head on straight, his feet on the ground, is failing and he has observed, quite objectively, that he is becoming more thoughtless, selfish, making more and more stupid remarks. He has tried to do something about this but it almost feels out of his control now, like pattern baldness. Why not just give in and be an idiot? Stop caring.”